Philipp Schwartz Fellow - Fachbereich Translations-, Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft

Who Chooses to Remember? The Russian Diaspora’s Commemoration of Russia’s Unnamed War

Commemorative practices initiated by diaspora without homeland institutional backing can lead to coordination among a more diverse set of actors, ultimately fostering new, agonistic, and more inclusive memory narratives. The project explores the territoriality and materiality of diaspora remembrance by looking at Russian diaspora initiatives to remember victims of the war in Ukraine. The project aims at evaluating the ever-changing interrelations between collective memories, the politics of commemoration, and migration as sites of societal integration or disintegration. How is the memory of those killed on both sides of the war in Ukraine organised and established in the new diaspora? Which memory mode – antagonistic, agonistic or cosmopolitan – dominates? How is the commemoration infrastructure formed? How does it relate to the official memorial narrative in Russia, whose main contours have emerged by now following the initial silence about Russia’s war dead? How does the new diaspora create new practices of commemoration, and why does the digital play a special role in them? Who chooses to remember?

Keywords

new Russian diaspora, memory politics, commemorative practices, agonistic memory